At thirteen years old, I was the youngest of the Mitchel clan, and not a sophisticated thirteen at that. I was as unaware of the ways of the world as a pig is of cutlery and table manners. I thought sex came after the number five and before the number seven.

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My mother, upset over the beating, and a little embarrassed that a child my age still believed in Santa Claus, sat me down and gave me a speech about how Santa may not be real but lived in the hearts of those who believed in him. I was stunned. You could have knocked me over with a wet dog hair. I didn’t want a Santa in my heart. I wanted a fat, bearded man in a red suit that brought presents at Christmas and could squeeze through a chimney or a keyhole, which was how Mother told me Santa came into our home, not some nothing living in my heart.

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The colored knew their place. Women knew their place. Gay was still a word for “happy.” Children were still thought by many best seen and not heard. Stores closed on Sunday. Our bomb was bigger than their bomb and the United States Army couldn’t be beat by anyone. Including Martians.

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Like Huckleberry Finn, Richard wasn’t the sort that would make a great adult, but he was one hell of a kid.

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On the second floor were two bedrooms, one for me, one for Mom and Dad. I was ecstatic about that. Our old house in No Enterprise had one legitimate bedroom, and me and Callie slept in the living room at night on pallets. Here at the Dew Drop we had our own beds, our own privacy, which was great since I had recently discovered the joys of masturbation.

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I liked to pretend there were dinosaurs in there, in suspended animation, and that any moment one, awakened by a crack of thunder, or maybe a stroke of hot lightning on the surface of the algae-slick green pond, would rise out of there shedding water and begin a rampage through downtown Dewmont, hopefully taking the school out first.

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“Getting any smarter, grease stick, getting any smarter?” Chester’s IQ didn’t seem to be rising, but his voice had certainly jumped some octaves. After about five minutes of slapping it reached the level of the tenors in the Vienna Boys Choir, only less melodious.

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Along with that trash, another item that began to appear with some regularity among the toss-aways were those strange clear balloons like the one that had been found in Callie’s room.

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I passed three teenage boys tossing a football. They were wearing jeans and tennis shoes just like me. But there was a difference. They looked as tidy and confident as bankers, and as the little girl had reported,

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He says they’re devil’s stuff. I thought about that, and I couldn’t picture no devil reading a Batman comic book.”

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I had outgrown playing cowboys and Indians. I had even stored my Davy Crockett coonskin cap away in my wooden chest. I now found the idea of running around the yard on an invisible horse with a racoon’s hide on my head, or an Indian war bonnet, foolish.

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Life has some clear answers, and then it has things where the questions ain’t even clear.

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“One of the things you better learn to laugh at is the women you can’t have, ’cause they’re gonna be plenty.

I sat for a moment, just breathing. Trying to get my strength and courage back. I felt as if something living inside of me had been stolen, taken away and mistreated, then returned without all of its legs.

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The world was certainly turning out to be a peculiar place, and I was becoming one perplexed little boy.

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I read Tarzan, Hardy Boys, and Nancy Drew books, and when I wore out with comics and books and riding my bike, me and Nub wandered the woods and creeks.

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So far, concerning my experiences of the summer, all that was missing were flying saucers and the Loch Ness Monster.